Last month, I posted our plans for the upcoming year. I said it was challenging, I said that having a strict schedule went against everything I feel is right for our homeschool. And yet, I ignored those promptings, I created a crazy schedule that I should have known would never work.
We are 2 weeks into our school year, and I am about to pull my hair out, and Ben is about to pull my hair out.
Every year, I start thinking we’re not doing enough, we’re not covering all we should be covering, we’re not keeping up with the Joneses. And every year, I make crazy plans, spend too much money on planned out curriucula, and make Ben suffer through my mistakes until I realize that unit studies are the way. They always have been. So why do I do this to myself, to him?
I don’t know the answer to that question, but I can tell you this. That schedule I posted last month is GONE. And much of the fancy curricula is put away. I’m turning over a new leaf.
Hello Amanda Bennett. I have loved Amanda’s units for years. I’ve been waiting for Ben to get old enough to use her unit studies. Well guess what? He’s old enough. So he and I sat down today, pulled up her website and I let him choose 5 unit studies to do over the next few months. And here they are, in no particular order:
Horses
Space
Baseball
Auto Racing
Dogs (coming soon)
Winter Olympics (coming soon)
But first, we’ll spend the next month or so doing some autumn/Thanksgiving stuff before moving on to the AB units. I think I’ll attempt to get Horses and Space done before the first of the year and then move forward with the rest. I wanted to leave room to do some smaller units in between, as Ben’s interests dictate.
I’m also planning to move toward a more Charlotte Mason style of doing language arts. I still need to do some more research about that, but I see dictation and/or copywork in Ben’s future. We’ll stick with Singapore math and Time4Learning. For now, we’re dropping everything else on that original list. I may add some things in later, but I think for right now, this is plenty!
Whew! I feel better already!
